The GT3 is still a brilliant track car. As ever the engine still zings with the best of them, gearshifts are instant, brake pedal feel is firm. And added to those are things I might be kidding myself I noticed even though, before Jan 2025, I last drove a GT3 in August 2023.
I do think the steering feels calmer. Porsche brought a GT3 to the S/T launch for a quick comparison, and the GT3’s steering felt lighter, flightier from straight ahead. Partly down too, surely, to the rear-steer. Still good, mind, just not as good as the S/T’s.
But whatever, here they’ve calmed that initial response for a bit more stability, a bit more natural feel as you begin to turn-in. Though with active rear steer there’s no absence of agility.
In steady state on circuit the GT3 work up to a bit of understeer. You can drive up to it, brake on corner entry to manage it or, in the right gear with plenty of revs applied, work the rear tyres to balance it out.
The sensational thing about almost any 911, but particularly a GT3, is that you feel comfortable approaching those limits within minutes of getting into the car, such is its communicativeness and consistency.
Then, they say, you can just turn off the circuit and after quickly making sure you haven’t mullered the tyres and brakes – which in our experience Porsches are very kind on – head onto the road.
There we drove a Touring with a manual gearbox. If I told you I’d noticed the extra absorbance while running over track kerbs I might be pretending, although it did feel willingly compliant, but on the road this does feel like a car that has retained all of its connectedness and feel, but which never runs out of ability on bad surfaces. It’s a fearsomely good road car as well as one of the world’s best track machines.
If there’s a flipside to the additional compliance it’s that the engine now spins over at 3000rpm-plus at 70mph, and presumably thinner carpets assist sound absorbance less than they did, so what was already a noisy at a cruise has become louder still.
